I had stepped outside to sit in my back yard around 16:10 (4:10 p.m.) CST today for a brief rest after spending a long time working at my computer. I recently bought a pair of Nikon Sportstar 10 x 25 binoculars and so I thought I would pass some time looking at birds, clouds and aircraft. There were scattered light cumulus clouds in the vicinity, but most of the sky overhead was clear and brilliantly blue. There was also a lot of air traffic. I watched three Boeing 737s pass directly overhead, a few minutes apart, and a four-engine jet somewhat south of my location. The larger jet was too far and too high to identify, but the engines left pronounced contrails. The 737s showed up very clearly in my binoculars, although there was a slight atmospheric haze, but I had them sharply in focus.

At about 16:20 (4:20 p.m.), just after watching the last of the 737s pass over, I began lowering the binoculars toward the horizon, when another object appeared in the field of view. I thought I had happened upon a small aircraft, so I steadied the binoculars to follow the craft through the sky. At that point, I realized that it didn’t look like an aircraft. It was filling a greater portion of my field of view than any of the jets had earlier. If it was a small aircraft, it should have been close enough to hear the engines, yet there were no aircraft sounds to be heard. If it was an aircraft, my view would have been about 45 degrees off its right front, with the aircraft banking in a right-hand turn, such that the wings would have been “level” with my point of view, but it was traveling perpendicular to my position, not turning toward me. For a second, I thought it was an aircraft similar to a de Havilland Tracker, with brightly painted engine nacelles. Then I thought it mig! ht be some kind of bird, first thinking that it must be soaring, because there was no motion of beating wings. But it didn’t really look like a bird. The object consisted of two large red-orange spheres, separated by a distance that was somewhat less than the diameter of either sphere, with a white body or fuselage between them and also a white body or fuselage attached slightly below them. The white shape(s) could have been spherical, about the same size as the red-orange spheres. It was hard to make out the shape of the white part(s), i.e., whether it was one body or separate pieces. the red-orange spheres were very bright in the direct sunlight, almost as if they were lights, but I don't think they were illuminated.

I followed the object with my binoculars as it continued a wide, steady, unwavering arc in a clockwise direction, until I lost it from sight as it passed behind my house. At that point, I got up from my chair to try to follow the object further, but I could not find it in the sky.

Whatever the object was, it had to have been some distance away, as it was as sharply focused in my binoculars as the 737s had been. For that reason, I ruled out the possibility that it could have been an insect and most smaller species of birds. If it was a bird, it would have been very large. The largest birds we have around here are pelicans, and this certainly was no pelican. I thought it could be a cluster of party balloons, but it was moving contrary to the wind and on a very steady path. Also, it was apparent that it was some distance away, both because it was sharply focused in the binoculars and because of the atmospheric haze between the object and me. Party balloons would not have filled so much of the field of view at that kind of distance.

Because I saw it for only a short time and was not able to see it by the naked eye, I really can’t say for sure what I may or may not have seen. I’m reporting this mainly in case someone else saw it and either can explain it or would like confirmation that they were not alone in seeing it.